Note 22 — Chapter X · POETIC ACHIEVEMENT IN VERNACULAR
Reading edition
The passage refers specifically, though not in the usual medieval terms, to Vergil’s diction. So do I. ii. 67, “la tua parola ornata”; and II. vii. 16, “O gloria de’ Latin ... per cui mostrò ciò che potea la lingua nostra.”
There are many references and allusions to specific passages; e.g., to the fourth Eclogue, often interpreted symbolically in the middle age, in II. xxii. 70; to Dido’s “Agnosco veteris vestigia flammæ” (Æn. IV. 23), in II. xxx. 48.
Justinian’s vision of Rome in III. vi may be said to carry out the idea of the Æneid in having the same Romanism.